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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22702528">Anything Goes</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shan282/pseuds/Shan282'>Shan282</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Brotherhood of Steel (Fallout), Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Not Cheating, Nuka-World Amusement Park (Fallout), Past Relationship(s), Sad Ending, Sad and Happy, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, The Institute (Fallout), The Railroad (Fallout), its not sad for everyone okay, no more of this everything is dead shit, the commonwealth is green and alive, they're not really together anymore</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 12:01:20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,378</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22702528</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shan282/pseuds/Shan282</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Nate died in the vault. Nora had watched him get shot. She'd seen Kellog pull the trigger, she'd screamed until her throat was raw and her cryostasis was activated again. She'd sobbed in front of his lifeless corpse. She'd mourned and moved on, Shaun was the only thing she had left now.</p><p>Nate should have died in the vault. He'd been shot, there was no reason why a skilled mercenary should have missed. But he didn't, he'd woken up cold and alone. He had one mission now, find his wife and son. Whoever had shot him, whoever had taken Shaun, had to have taken Nora too. There was no way Nora would have just left him behind. Right?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>John Hancock/Female Sole Survivor (Implied), Male Sole Survivor/Piper Wright, Mason/Female Sole Survivor (implied), Paladin Danse/Female Sole Survivor, Porter Gage/Female Sole Survivor</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Anything Goes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The metal walls around him creaked as the earth around it shifted. Somewhere, deep in the metal death trap, an alarm blared, ear piercing and so intensely irritating that it seemed it could wake the dead. The clinking of water falling onto the metal floor from a leaking pipe invaded the room, competing with the sound of the alarm. There were no sounds to break up the monotony of the room, the pods surrounding the walkway were filled with the dead. Frozen survivors that had been long since forgotten by those who put them in there. One pod was open and empty, the woman who’d been inside had fled long ago.</p><p>A single sound erupted from the furthest pod from the door, a painful gasp, a death rattle. A lone Radroach, living alone in this frozen tomb, surrounded by its dead kin, fled from the sound. Another gasp, then another, as the survivor fought to fill lungs that had been left empty for over centuries.</p><p>As the man slowly thawed, his fingers twitching to grasp hold of someone who was long gone. His brain was scrambled, his mouth opening and closing like a fish suffocating on dry land. The only sounds that left his mouth were choked gasps and croaks. He reached out his first bumping against the frosted over glass in front of him. His entire body ached, his head pounding, with each move of his muscles he could feel heart flooding back into his bones, the blood in his veins slowly pumping faster.</p><p>“Sh—“ Nate couldn’t finish the sentence. He brows cinched together, face twisting as he tried to speak once more. “Nor—“ No luck, perhaps somewhere along the line he’d lost his voice along with his mind. He didn’t know what he was trying to say, not entirely, but he has a vague sense that they were names.</p><p>“Shaun.” Finally, finally, a sound croaked out of him. It tore itself from his rough throat with a ferocity that shocked even him. The words were familiar, so <em>fucking</em> familiar. He caught fragments of memories: a baby boy clutched in his arms, soft blue eyes and fierce red hair framed by a setting sun, a laugh that he’d fallen in love with.</p><p>The hatch to his pod wasn’t closed all the way, as he weakly pounded against it, it moved, slowly but surely, until finally with a defeated hiss it lifted open. Its occupant, taking his first breath of fresh air is literal years, tumbled out rather unceremoniously. His outstretched arms caught him before his head hit the floor. He caught sight of the gold wedding ring on his impossibly pale hand.</p><p>“Nora.” He breathed, his head shooting up, so fast the world spun for a few seconds. He was looking at the empty pod before him. As his memories slowly came back, he became distinctly aware that his wife should be there. He remembered watching her climb in while he cradled Shaun.</p><p>Shaun. His son. He was gone.</p><p>Panic set in, where the <em>fuck</em> was his son? Where the fuck was Nora? He jumped up, definitely a bad idea as he immediately had to grab ahold of his cryo-pod to stay standing. Maybe Nora had taken Shaun, if she’d woken up first she could have taken him. He tried to convince himself of this, but he knew Nora. She wouldn’t have closed him back in, she would have waited. Wouldn’t she? Why would she leave him behind?</p><p>He took slow, unsteady steps, calling out for anyone who could hear him as he went. After minutes of no response and a look at the frozen pre-War corpses around him, he gave up. He was all alone in here, the only option he had was to push forward, move on. He needed to get out of this metal death trap of a vault and then he could worry about finding his wife and son.</p><p>He passed a living quarter and stepped inside, exploring the area for anything useful until he finally paused in front of a bathroom mirror. When his eyes finally focused enough to catch a glimpse of himself, he recoiled at the sight. His lips were a quickly fading blue color and his hair, which was usually greying ginger, was slowly soaking with blood from a leaking wound on the side of his head. He reached up and felt around the wound, but lurked forward to tightly grasp the sink as more unwelcome memories assaulted him.</p><p>Someone in a white hazmat suit and a man dressed in black leathers. They had woken him up, tried to take Shaun from him, but he hadn’t let go. A gun raised, a threat, but Nate wasn’t afraid of being shot, instead he was terrified of what they would do to Shaun if he let him go, if he gave him up. It hadn’t mattered, an ear-piercing shot rang out, he felt a flash of pain and then he world went black.</p><p>He’d been shot, he realized after his mind stopped spinning from the whirl of new information. He’d survived, somehow the bullet had just grazed him. The wound wasn’t deep enough to kill him but enough to knock him temporarily unconscious. Whoever had shot him had sealed him back up, it was the only reason he could still be alive. They’d sealed him up and then someone had tried to open it again, had broken the seal but given up.</p><p>If he’d been shot then that meant… Shaun was gone. Whoever had taken Shaun had likely taken Nora as well he deduced. There was no way she would willingly leave him behind if he wasn’t dead.</p><p>Nate took a few minutes to scrub the wound and his hair clean then stumbled on, shuddering at the rotting carcass of a massive cockroach. If the cockroaches were this big, he was terrified to see what size lizards were now. God, he fucking <em>hated</em> lizards.</p><p>He found a security baton discarded on a table and grabbed it, snapping it out to its full length, he couldn’t be too careful. Skeletons were littering the halls we walked through, after snooping on one of the various terminals he determined they were the Vault-Tec employees that were supposed to be monitoring all of the cryo-pods. They’d died in this hell along with the former residents of Sanctuary Hills, his former neighbors, and friends. One, hidden behind a pile of boxes, had a Pip-Boy circling its wrist. They were long dead, they wouldn’t need it, he took the Pip-Boy from the skeleton and attached it to his own wrist.</p><p>He finally came to the vault door. It was open, he could see the elevator to the surface before him. Anxiety gnawed at his stomach, what if the world wasn’t survivable? Surely it had to be, the people who’d stolen Shaun from him didn’t look like they’d been in the vault. They had to be from outside. He pushed his fears down, even if the world above wasn’t survivable he had to find Nora and Shaun, he had to at least try.</p><p>Nate descended the stairs and took a few tentative steps onto the platform. There were a few seconds where the only sound he heard was the door alarm blaring above him before finally the platform groaned and started to slowly ascend towards the surface. He looked up and watched as the mouth of the fault retracted, raising a hand to cover his eyes from the sunlight the flooded the elevator. He wondered how long it had been, surely it couldn’t have been that long, though how could he ever be sure. He’d been cryogenically frozen, it could have been a hundred years since the bombs dropped and he wouldn’t have aged a day.</p><p>He took a deep, shuddering breath when he finally breached the surface. It took him a few minutes to adjust to the light, pure, unfiltered sunlight was a shock compared to the dark hallways and artificial lighting he’d been fumbling around in for the last hour.</p><p>One foot after another, Nate stepped off the platform and onto the dirt, surveying the world around him. The place looked the same aside from the thick layer of dirt everywhere. There were some patches of green grass, he was admittedly surprised by the amount of green around him. He could see Sanctuary below and was just as surprised to see people walking around it. Instead of taking the clear path behind him, he took the faster way down, sliding straight down the cliff face. Nora had always said he was a reckless idiot, albeit quite fondly. Screw the path though, that would add on a good five minutes to his time and he needed to talk to another human being right now, he needed to know what had happened while he was out. He needed to know if anyone had seen his family.</p><p>He skidded to a stop at the bottom of the cliff and took off at a half-run towards Sanctuary. There was a massive wall erected around it, or at least the start of one. One look to his left and he could see they were nowhere close to circling the entire perimeter. Still, it was an impressive defense against enemies, what enemies he wasn’t sure. He squeezed through a gap in the wall and looked around, taking in the collapsed houses and wooden shacks that were being built on some of the cleared off foundations.</p><p>“Intruder!” A woman shrieked and another alarm sounded. Honestly, Nate was getting sick and tired of hearing alarms at this point. The entire place exploded into chaos at that, men and women with guns running towards him, he had enough sense to raise his hands about his head.</p><p>“I’m not here to attack you.” He said, doing his best to reassure the jumpy survivors.</p><p>A man with a very funny looking hat raised a laser rifle towards him, Nate had never been good with those things. He preferred a solid semi-auto with a clip he could feel emptying, the whole crank-to-shoot thing had always been a huge turn off for him. He was getting distracted, something else Nora had pointed out time and time again during their relationship. He tended to get in his head when he was out of his element, he’d get stuck in one line of thinking and completely zone out.</p><p>“Who are you?” The man is the cowboy-esque hat asked him, his voice cold and untrusting.</p><p>“Nathaniel Mills.”</p><p>“What are you doing here, Nathaniel Mills?”</p><p>“Trying to find my wife and son, I think they were kidnapped,” Nate answered and he watched the man’s entire demeanor change. His shoulders softened and his expression turned into one of pity.</p><p>“Marcy, turn the siren off.” The man ordered and with that, the crowd dispersed leaving Nate standing alone with the weird hatted, laser rifle-wielding man. “I’m Preston Garvey, senior officer of the Commonwealth Minutemen.”</p><p>“Minutemen? Like those Revolutionary War guys?” Nate frowned, trying to make sense of the words coming out of Preston’s mouth.</p><p>“You haven’t heard of us?” Preston seemed shocked, maybe even a little offended.</p><p>“No?” It came out as more of a question than a definitive answer. “I just woke up in the vault, I don’t even know what year it is.”</p><p>“I thought everyone from the vault was dead,” Preston said it more to himself, Nate answered anyways.</p><p>“Everyone in there is, except me. Did the vault suit not give it away?” He looked down at the dirty fabric, his lower half was mostly covered in dust from sliding down from the vault.</p><p>“Figured you’d explored the vault and taken the suit for something new to wear. You said you’re looking for your family?”</p><p>“Yes.” They’d really gotten off track, Nate needed answers. “Nora and Shaun, he’s only a baby, have you seen either of them? It can’t have been <em>that long</em> since they were taken.”</p><p>“Wait? You’re looking for Nora?”</p><p>“You’ve seen her?” Nate was practically bouncing in excitement.</p><p>“Unfortunately not in a few months, she helped us get settled in here, took her Mr. Handy and Dogmeat once she was done. We needed her help a few weeks back, called her on the radio but she never showed.” Preston frowned, his face pinched in a mix of anger and disappointment, Nate couldn’t fathom why they’d have called her for help. Nora was a lawyer, she couldn’t help them fight, she probably couldn’t help anyone in this new, fucked up world. “Haven’t seen her since. Sturges gets deliveries from her every now and then, but besides that, she hasn’t been here in a long time.”</p><p>“Shit. Do you know where she went?” He worried at his bottom lip, from the sound of it she <em>wasn’t</em> with Shaun. Meaning two things, either Shaun was still with whoever had taken him or that she’d gotten away with Shaun and left him somewhere safe.</p><p>“Probably Diamond City, when I first met her in Concord she was on her way there to look for her son. Here, I’ll mark it on your map.” Preston held his hand out for Nate’s arm, clicking around on the Pip-Boy’s built-in map before dropping his arm again.</p><p>“Thanks. Really, I won’t forget this.” Nate said, ready to set out.</p><p>“I hope you find her, and your son. And here, take this.” He thrust a pistol towards him, Nate took it gratefully and, after consulting his map, set off in the direction of Diamond City which, by the looks of it, was located at what was supposed to be Fenway Park. He hadn’t gone there since before Shaun was born, hell, he hadn’t gone since before his last deployment. They’d gone to a game the night before his deployment and not again since.</p><p>The memories left an empty hole in his chest, the knowledge that Nora was alive and out there was the only thing that kept him from completely falling apart. He was going to find her, together they’d find their son. It was his job to keep them both safe, he’d failed that once, he wouldn’t fail again.</p><p>He made it three feet before the blood loss caught up to him and he dropped to the ground.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>That's right! I kept them both alive! I've been thinking about this one for a while. I'm not going to go into <em>everything</em>, you'll have to read for that. But I can promise you that this won't work out for everyone, the ending is gonna be sad. Maybe not for everyone but for a decent chunk of the characters.</p><p>This was originally supposed to be a longer first chapter but I decided towards the end that I would rather do Nate and Nora's POVs in alternating chapters. instead of the same ones. So Chapter 2 will focus on Nora and we'll have to wait until Chapter 3 for Nate to come back.</p><p>Follow me on Tumblr <a href="https://lil-miss-wanderer.tumblr.com/">@lil-miss-wanderer</a>. I love getting requests/prompts/asks and whatnot.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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